Chingri is basically known as prawns in Bengali. Chingri Bhapa is steamed prawns in mustard sauce, which is also one of the popular dishes made during Durga Puja and is loved by all the Bongs in the world.
This recipe is very easy to make for all those who think it's a tedious task to make it at home. You can steam the prawns in a stainless steel utensil inside boiling water.
Recipe By: Pooja Gupta
Recipe Type: Main Course
Serves: 4
For The Curry:
Prawns - 12-14 (large sized)
Narkel or grated coconut (fresh or frozen ) - 1/2 cup
Thick beaten yogurt - 1/4th cup
Sugar - 1/4th tsp
Turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp
Sorsher tel or Mustard oil - 2 tbsp
Green chillies - 8-10
Salt - to taste
For The Paste:
Mustard seeds - 3 tbsp
Posto or poppy seeds - 3 tsp
Green chillies - 3
Salt - a pinch
1. Soak mustard and poppy seeds in warm water for 30 minutes.
2. Then, grind it to a paste
3. Use almost 3/4th of the paste, which makes little less than 1/2 cup.
4. If the paste is too pungent for you, you can sieve the paste and use the more liquid mustardy water mixed with a little of the thick paste.
5. Wash and shell the prawns and devein them.
6. Mix the prawns with salt and turmeric and keep it aside for half an hour.
7. Make a smooth paste with mustard and poppy seeds, 3 green chillies, a little salt and water.
8. In a container, which you can steam or which you can put in the pressure cooker, mix the prawns with mustard paste, yogurt and salt according to the taste.
9. You could also add just a pinch of sugar.
10. Slit 4/5 green chillies and add.
11. Add 2 tablespoons of mustard oil to this, drizzle liberally on top.
12. Add some fresh grated coconut to this. If you are using frozen grated coconut, defrost it and then use.
13. Now, put water in the pressure cooker bottom and put this in the container.
14. In this pressure cooker without whistle, after the full pressure is built, the time has to be measured (no whistles), so we can keep it for 1 minute after the build-up of full steam.
15. In a whistling pressure cooker, you have to allow one whistle.
16. Take it out and serve with hot white rice.
17. For an extra kick, drizzle a little mustard oil before serving the dish.
- 1. If you do not have a wet grinder to make the mustard paste, you can dry grind the seeds in a coffee grinder and then mix the dry powder with a little vinegar, salt, and green chillies and keep it for an hour or so.
- 2. The wet grinder serves the purpose much better and makes a nice smooth paste with green chillies, and salt.
- 3. The same recipe can be applied to paneer, which is called bhapa paneer. That doesn’t need the posto or poppy seeds though.
- 4. You can also try this with Salmon.
- Serving size - 1 piece
- Calories - 180 cal
- Fat - 8 g
- Protein - 24 g
- Carbohydrates - 11 g
- Sugar - 1 g